Inside a Standard Room at Milan's Maison Moschino

You'll have to pardon the temporary brevity of this, but we just stepped off a delayed flight from Milan back to New York, but still quite wanted to share the answer to yesterday's big Guess the Hotel mystery. Of course you all are good, and guess that the dessert-themed chandelier in inside the Maison Moschino, a true fashion hotel that open less than a year ago in a renovated train station.

We recently stayed here, for one night only, complete on our own and scored the Design Hotels Advance Purchase rate of 184 Euro per night, which, after taxes and fees are figured in, totaled $202 Euro. It's a pretty great rate, considering we've seen this hotel listing for 300+ Euros for just our standard room, and we jumped at the lower rate. Sadly the Maison Moschino has one of the worst hotel WiFi rates (1 Euro per hour = 24 Euros per day, for one device) and too-fancy-for-their-own-good breakfasts that start at 16 Euro per person.

Now we love design hotels as much as (probably way more than) the next person and we have occasion to attend Fashion Week, so the high-style / high-price approach is something with which we are comfortable. At the Maison Moschino, you pay to say that you are staying at the Maison Moschino. The hotel itself was very clean, almost clinically so, and very quiet. We had an inkling that its 65 rooms were near empty of guests, there was so little action. The design is whimsical in keeping with the Moschino brand's aesthetic, but this can occasionally be a hindrance.

So what did we think of our room?It was very cute, but completely impractical. We spent far too much time squeezing the pastry pillows than working, since there was no desk nor even a table that could much more than hold your camera and a guidebook. The chairs were not comfortable for relaxing or working, the bed was almost hard and could have benefitted from a mattress pad to soften things up, and half of the TV channels didn't work (including RAI Uno)! The bathroom was bright and very clean but also very small, and oddly there's a small balcony off of it, which we only used for sitting our white wine bottle outside overnight to chill.

We'll be back with many, many more details of our stay, our looks into other unique rooms, and peeks into all the public spaces tomorrow. We have more criticism for the Maison Moschino than we like, but these are things that are important to know before splashing out on a hotel like the Maison for, say, 3 or more days. This is not a hotel to stay in for longer than maybe two nights, and it's especially not a hotel for anyone planning to work or entertain in their rooms. Oopsthat rules out the fashion industry crowd!

Tomorrow: the public spaces, a few other rooms and more reflections on our stay at the Maison Moschino.